Human Resources and the Changing Nature of Work.
Does your HR department giving prospective employees a positive impression of your company?
Using Collaboration to Improve Hiring and Retention of the Best Talent.
The workforce is changing, and HR is under pressure to meet this change. Three main forces are influencing human resources executives: changing demographics, workforce diversity and the changing nature of work. Per a report by Forbes, 78% of new entrants to the employment market say they are “strongly influenced” by how innovative a company is when considering employers. At the same time, according to Workforce 2020, only 30% of executives say their companies give special attention to the wants and needs of these “Millennials”.
This presents a big opportunity for organisations hoping to attract the best candidates. But this opportunity puts human resources departments under pressure not only to keep up, but to portray their company as cutting edge to set it apart to attract new talent, retain and engage employees, and increase productivity.
“Millennials” are looking for work environments that offer the most freedom and the greatest opportunity for collaboration. The good news is, if you meet the challenge, everybody wins. Taking advantage of collaboration technology such as video conferencing can introduce a new age of HR solutions that can address the challenges of hiring and retaining the best talent. During a job hunt, the HR department is often the first face of the company the candidate meets with. This first impression and interview process can affect the overall outlook and determined whether the candidate likes a company. So, the question is: Does your HR department giving prospective employees a positive impression of your company?
A Collaboration Platforms Does not just Aid Recruitment.
Collaboration technology is important in every department of a business. From sales to executives, the ability to share and cultivate ideas as a group allows for greater creativity, improved communication, enhanced productivity. But when it comes to human resource teams, the efficiency and productivity that is the result of the adoption of a collaboration platform can be extensive. Why? Collaboration is about people, connection, productivity, and culture, so it makes sense that the department with the most interaction with other people could benefit tremendously from collaboration technology.
The Cisco Spark platform offers multiple functions such as video calls, conference calls, recording of meetings, video training, messaging, file sharing, and even creating separate rooms for different video meetings to take place. With so many uses, it’s easy to see the applications for HR teams.
For example, another major benefit that collaboration technologies can bring is onboarding new employees, training and ongoing mentoring and/or assimilation into the organization. These platforms are also great for conducting group training sessions that can be recorded, organized into a “room,”, and accessed later by other members of the team whenever and wherever convenient.
The Social Aspect.
It’s no secret that keeping good employees means keeping them happy. Sometimes that requires more than just good benefits and a decent salary. It’s HR’s responsibility to support employee needs and wants during their job. Employees and potential applicants want that perfect work-life balance. No parent wants to miss a child’s first football game. Or when life takes a sudden turn, employees want the accessibility to handle personal needs while still working.
In a recent Fortune survey, 95% of respondents said that work-life balance was important to them. More than a quarter of young workers said they were disappointed by the level of balance they could maintain.
WebEx and Cisco Spark are great examples of collaboration solutions that can help employees maintain that ever-so-wanted work-life balance. These tools give people the opportunity to work when and where they need to be. If a doctor appointment runs longer than expected, WebEx keeps you on time for that two o’clock meeting without missing a beat.
Collaboration platforms like Cisco Spark allow new hires to “meet” other staffers, virtually as well as in person, and shorten some of the time it takes to assimilate into a new environment. Collaboration technology also allows for mentoring and coaching, across the office or with colleagues across the globe as well as playing a big role in corporate culture throughout organizations. Much like we connect easily with others by way of our online social networks, collaboration platforms will likely allow us to connect more quickly and develop deeper bonds within the organisations where we work. The bigger the organisation, the harder it is to get to know people. Collaboration platforms change that. Whether conversations and groups are work-related or focused on people interested in fitness, golf, gardening, sports, or anything else, technology makes it easy to find and connect with team members with similar interests.
Easy to use tools to increase productivity and get back to communicating face-to-face.
To conclude, much of a business’s success relies on the core of its HR processes. While HR departments all over the world scramble for bigger budgets, the deeper answers continue to lie in collaboration solutions that allow you to make voice and video calls, have video conferences, video meetings, training, messaging, shared documents in files and create separate rooms where internal and external teams can collaborate. Tools such as Slack and Skype for Business are useful but limited in what they can offer.
Please contact Unifi Communications, the experts in Cisco Collaboration, to find out how you can use collaboration technology to set your company apart to attract new talent, retain and engage employees.
Explore how you can use collaboration technology to meet HR challenges with our Use Case Tool.
Read our case study on how John Lewis Partnership are using Cisco Collaboration Tools to improve productivity, training, and communications
